PR Plan….

One of the pillars of digital leadership that Amber Teaman & Jessica Johnson presented about at with new admin at the #IPAadmin14 workshop this past week resonates with me, as I am setting a public relations goal for myself entering the 2014-2015 school year. “If we don’t tell our story, someone else will, and more often than not, another’s version will not be the one we want told.” Here is my plan to become storyteller-in-chief this school year using free social media tools.

I’ve also read blog posts from fellow admin, sharing their social media plans here and here.

I’m excited to use these tools to share all the positives associated with our school, and by doing so, create transparency for our parents, community members and a global audience.

School WebsiteWe have a pretty amazing district & school website, thanks to our Tech Director, Eric. The National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) recognized our district (1 of 12 merit award winners) for its electronic media communications, as well as social media for our superintendent’s blog (again 1 of 12 merit award winners in the social media category). I look forward to continuing to utilize our school website to provide timely communication and ensure information is accurate and available for visitors to our site.

Weekly Newsletters via SMOREThis year, I plan to use SMORE to communicate to parents each Friday. Here’s my first one! I love how user-friendly and easy it is to create the flyers/newsletters. Since I plan on using this regularly throughout the year, I did purchase the educator’s membership ($59/year) to allow for unlimited monthly flyers, custom backgrounds and analytics & ad-free. Once I distribute the flyer, I’m able to see analytics data showing how and where people saw it, how long they spent on the page & the number of clicks to each link or button. SMORE is going to beautify the weekly electronic communication with our parents & school community this year ! Of course our school will continue to send a paper-newsletter quarterly, but SMORE will be the platform used for weekly, electronic communication.

Social MediaLast year, we used a district twitter account, which we will continue to utilize. This year, I plan to pilot a school Instagram account! I am hopeful that this medium will allow us to share amazing photos of who we are as a school community and all the great things happening while the students are at school. I was excited to learn about these cute Favicards from Erin Klein that I plan to have available for parents to take at the Meet & Greet and Curriculum Night this year.

PinterestOur teachers utilize Pinterest to share ideas/strategies and it is my hope to help connect all of our staff members with one another. Last year, whenever we had a school-wide event (like Grinch Day), one of our team-leaders created a shared board where all teachers could all pin ideas to, which worked out well. It would be great to continue that this year. I’d be interested to hear about other schools who use a Pinterest account to share ideas with parents and if that’s successful.